Consequences of inappropriate relationship

Chester County Common Pleas Judge David Bortner says that he is not a “send-a-message” type of jurist when it comes to sentencing criminal defendants. There is no sure way to determine, he says, what the public is filtering from the meaning behind what punishment he hands down, or even whether they are listening.

But those who paid any attention to the proceedings in Bortner’s courtroom last week concerning the fate of a former Bayard Rustin High School swimming coach, Kenneth Fuller, would be well served by the lesson the case affords. Fuller, for all other intents a respected and well-liked man with an admirable background, is now spending at least seven months behind bars at the Chester County Prison.

Fuller, 48, of West Goshen, had an illicit sexual relationship with a female swimmer on his team when she was a junior at the school. The two of them met several times off campus grounds, and went to a Kennett Square area hotel for a sexual liaison that included alcohol that Fuller had purchased for the girl, whom he had known for more than a decade. They also had sex together at a local park. Fuller had arranged one of the trysts by forging a medical excuse for his own teenage daughter and pretending to be the girl’s father.

As was made extraordinarily clear at the sentencing last week, Fuller’s actions have had a devastating impact on his family, and that of the girl. His wife and children described in detail how their lives had been altered negatively because of the restrictions placed on him and by the public embarrassment and humiliation his behavior exposed them to. He talked about a loss of business and an exile from the swimming world he cherished. His face had been in the newspapers and in the media; people whisper in his presence.

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But Bortner, rightly, did not focus on the pain that Fuller had suffered in determining whether to accept his plea for a probationary sentence that would keep him from sitting behind bars. Instead, he looked what had become of the girl and her family because of what her parents referred to disdainfully as Fuller’s “mid-life crisis.” She no longer swims competitively with her classmates at Rustin. She had to leave school at he end of her junior year because of the attention the case brought. Her health has deteriorated, to the pointed of losing hair and sleep, and friends she had counted on have disappeared. Although her name had not been mentioned in the press, her part in the crime is known to those around her and she has been ostracized. Most of all, she remains filled with guilt over the trauma brought on her family.

When describing his reaction to Fuller’s display on woe over his situation, Bortner reacted as we would have. That’s his fault, he essentially said; now he pays for it. He should have thought of where things would wind up when he made the decision to pursue an inappropriate relationship with someone 30 years his junior. To those who would cast blame on the girl for participating in the relationship, we remind them that there are reasons why minors are treated differently than adults and protected from them.

Fuller was the adult; the girl was the child. All of his past should have forced him to look that cold fact in the eye and behaved as an adult should. And those in a similar place to Fuller’s across the county should take heed.